Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 73372 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 367(@200wpm)___ 293(@250wpm)___ 245(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 73372 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 367(@200wpm)___ 293(@250wpm)___ 245(@300wpm)
Black marble. Everywhere, black marble, polished to a shine that reflects the chandeliers in long, liquid ribbons of light. Frosted glass partitions etched with a crest I don’t recognise, a diamond wreathed in flames, repeated on every surface like a signature. Rose petals in crystal bowls at every doorway, blood-red against the black stone, and the scent of them hits me as I walk through the entrance and it’s sweet and dark and carries an undertone of something I can’t name but that feels like a warning dressed as a welcome.
Crossed swords behind the ace of spades, cast in bronze above the main doors. I stand beneath them and I feel small and clean and Idaho in a room that is none of those things.
Anton is waiting.
He’s in black tonight. The first time I’ve seen him in black, and the difference between Anton in charcoal and Anton in black is the difference between a man who enters a room and a man who owns it. The suit fits like it was sewn onto his body. His hair is pushed back. His face is clean-shaven. And when he sees me in the navy dress, in his casino, standing under his family’s crest with rose petals at my feet, his eyes do something I haven’t seen before. They widen. One fraction. One beat. And then the performance slides back into place and he’s smiling and extending his hand and saying my name.
“Daisy. You came.”
“Kaye told me to.”
The half-lift. “Kaye tells you a lot of things.”
He places his hand on the small of my back and guides me into the room, and his palm is warm against my bare skin because the navy dress has no back and his hand is on my spine and every nerve ending in my body recalibrates to the point of contact and I forget how to walk for half a step.
He introduces me to people.
That’s the part I wasn’t prepared for. Not the casino, not the marble, not the chandeliers or the rose petals or the diamond crest. The people. He walks me through the room with his hand on my back and he introduces me to men in suits who cost more than my education and women in dresses that cost more than my apartment, and every single one of them gives me the same expression: a smile, warm and knowing and faintly amused, that says they understand something I don’t.
A man with silver hair and a Swiss accent shakes my hand and holds it a beat too long and his eyes drop to the navy dress and back up and the knowing smile widens and he tells Anton something in French that makes Anton’s jaw tighten before the charm snaps back.
A woman in red touches my arm. “You’re the new one,” she tells me. “From the firm.” Her voice is kind. Her eyes are not. “He has good taste.”
I don’t understand. I smile and I shake hands and I stand beside Anton Almazov in his casino with his hand on my bare back and I’m introduced as his paralegal and everyone nods and no one believes it, and I can’t figure out why until a woman across the room catches my eye. She’s standing alone, holding champagne, her dress cut lower than mine. She gives me a look that is neither kind nor unkind. It’s the look of a woman who used to stand where I’m standing.
My stomach turns.
I excuse myself. I find the bathroom. I grip the marble counter and run cold water over my wrists and I stare at my reflection and I’m a girl from Idaho in a backless dress in a Bratva casino and everyone in the room thinks I’m something I’m not and the man who brought me here is the reason they think it.
I go back out. What else is there to do?
HE DANCES WITH ME.
Not in the main room. There’s a smaller space beyond the casino floor, a lounge with dim lighting and a band playing something slow and European that I don’t recognise, and Anton takes my hand and leads me to the floor and I follow because refusing would draw more attention than accepting, and because his hand is warm and sure around mine and my body is a traitor.
His right hand settles on my waist. My left hand finds his shoulder. We are close. Closer than the conference room, closer than the file room, closer than any distance we’ve maintained since the day he walked into Keyes and the air left my lungs. His chin is above my head. His cologne is cedar and smoke and the darker thing underneath that I’ve never been able to identify and that I suspect is just him, just the scent of Anton Almazov’s skin, and I am breathing it in and I can’t stop.